


a study in Jyn Erso

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cassian Andor has a crush, F/M, Female Friendship, First Time, Getting Together, Male-Female Friendship, Mission Fic, Pining, Pining Cassian, Rogue One - some of them live, Shara Bey is a badass, and recovering from torture, and the whole rebellion can see it, background Shara Bey/Kes Dameron - Freeform, it isn't stalking it's staring, partly canon-compliant, very brief references to torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:47:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9347846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian knows he's spending too much time looking in the general direction of a certain Jyn Erso, and he probably has a crush the size of Yavin, and everyone in the Rebellion can see it.He asks Shara Bey for advice.He also has to stare the idea of losing Jyn before he can even sort his feelings out right in the face.Oops?





	1. Chapter 1

He knows he’s dragging his left leg on every step, and he can’t stand the worry on the faces of the beings speeding past him in the cramped corridors of the base, and he grits his teeth and tries to catch his breath. Tries to focus on the datapad that he’d received from Draven. On the surface, the mission details are simple: a smash-and-grab on a world that is already starting to show signs of defiance against the crushing rule of the Empire. 

Nothing is ever that simple.

Cassian practically lives by that rule, these days.

Nothing is ever that simple, and always plan for the worst, and -- 

He’s out on one of the busier landing pads, and he can see the heavy freighter that he’s been assigned for this job, and he’s a little surprised at the number of oversized crates piled onto the tarmac. 

He spots Shara Bey, who doesn’t seem to be too bothered by the fact that her flight suit is very drab and very stiff -- as he watches, she throws her head back in a hearty laugh -- he wants her to share the joke -- 

Except that he’s finally within shouting distance and the other being who’s laughing with Shara is -- 

Cassian exhales on a grunt, and hobbles forward, and doesn’t stop until he’s gently brushing Shara out of the way, until he’s frowning at the tiny woman in creased fatigues and sturdy boots. Her sleeves and her trouser legs are rolled up and he can see multiple sheaths for vibroblades, and there are long straggling wisps of hair escaping the braid wound around the top of her head. There are still bandages on her hands, the same hands that have stilled over the puzzle-pieces that make up a heavy blaster.

Her hands, that had held him up and held him together, and not just on that mission to Scarif that they had just barely escaped -- her steady hands, warming at the fingertips where she had been holding him.

He clears his throat. No need to think about that now.

What is here and now is -- Jyn Erso. Here, when last he’d heard she’d just been broken out of Imperial custody -- that being the common euphemism for _torture_ \-- he knows his voice is harsh when he glowers at her and says, “Why are you here.”

“Andor,” another voice answers. Shara. He looks in her direction. 

She doesn’t seem impressed with him, he can tell, from the lines in her forehead and the subtle twist dragging down the corner of her mouth. “Are you sure you’re fit to go on any missions at all? Because from where I’m standing, you look like you might fall over any moment now.”

“I. Am. Fine.” He bares his teeth at her in what he feels is really not a smile, and looks down at Jyn again. “I should be asking you the same question.”

He’s expecting Jyn to roll her eyes -- that seems to be her favorite way of opening a conversation -- but he’s _not_ expecting her to look away and pull the collar of her shirt aside. He’s also not expecting the freckles sprinkled around her collarbone.

“ -- as good as new,” Jyn is saying, and Cassian blinks. Stares. How had he not noticed the raised lines of all-too-new scars disappearing into her clothes, brownish-pink where they’ve clearly been healing for some time?

“You were only rescued last week,” he says, and is grateful for the harsh rasp of his breathing that hides his concern.

“And Solo got me to a place that he knew. The healers there use herbs and other things, and they’re almost as good as the droids and the bacta that we have here. I sent a report to Mon Mothma, didn’t it get passed around? They’ve already dispatched Organa to that system, see if she can talk them into throwing their lot in with us.” There is everything matter-of-fact in Jyn’s voice, but he can see the twitch at the corner of her left eye that means she’s remembering something unsavory.

He’s not mollified, he tells himself. He’s not going to stop being ticked off that she’s here. Speaking of which -- he turns to Shara, and raises his own eyebrow. “And Kes?”

“If only you’d let me explain earlier, we’d be going through liftoff procedures by now,” is the only slightly impatient response. “The bloody nerfherder broke his ankle on his last mission.”

Cassian winces. “Left or right?”

“Left. Again. Which is why he is grounded. And why I’m not talking to him right now.”

“I don’t feel sorry for him at all,” Cassian says.

She shrugs, and begins to examine her fraying sleeve. 

“He’s the reason why I’m here,” Jyn says.

She sounds so cool and rational and Cassian is torn right down the middle between admiring her and ordering her to stay grounded.

“He was supposed to be planting the bombs. But he’s not here, so -- I asked for the job. I know a little about the explosives you tend to use.”

Cassian is not not not going to order her to stay on the ground.

This is a smash-and-grab mission. He needs someone who knows their way around different kinds of explosives. Jyn knows far too much about blowing things up. She is vital to the success of this job. 

He has to give in. 

He sighs, as quietly as he can, and turns back to Shara. “Who else is coming with us?”

“The rest of our contacts are at our destination. We’re not going to get them out; we need them to stay in place. This freighter’s all that’s available, so that’s what we’re flying. Just you and me and her and a couple of droids and all these,” and she waves at the crates and Cassian has to sigh.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jyn get heavily to her feet, and for a moment she keeps her eyes tightly closed before jamming the heavy blaster into a holster at her hip, and fiddling with the crate that she had been sitting on. The whine and hiss of the crate’s thrusters makes his teeth ache -- and there are three more of those to load into the freighter.

He falls in behind Jyn, and she still hasn’t rolled the cuffs of her trousers down, so he has a good view of the freckles dotting the backs of her legs.

He has to swallow, hard, and push away the idea of counting those freckles out of his mind.

It’s going to be a long trip to wherever it is they’re going.

*

“Twenty hours till realspace,” Shara says, once they’re underway.

Cassian forces a smile. Looks up from where he’s securing the crates again in the cargo hold. “Must be a change, having to fly something like this,” he says.

“I don’t mind the practice,” Shara says as she pads past the hatch. He can hear her voice as it filters back to him. “But I’d really rather be hounding Solo. He owes me a ride in his YT.”

“I’ve heard the stories,” Cassian says, eyeing the crates critically. Two of them are full of different kinds of explosives. He doesn’t want to guess at what’s in the rest. “Still find the Kessel run one hard to believe, though.”

“The Kessel run is impossible,” she says. “But for some reason Skywalker believes him.”

He shakes his head. “I’m supposed to say, that one knows what he knows, and he knows things that we’re not meant to be aware of. But also there’s the farm thing.”

He gets to the galley in time for Shara to snort and shake her head. “That’s rich, isn’t it, coming from you and coming from me.”

He shrugs, and turns one of the chairs back to front so he can sit more comfortably. He’s happy to accept a mug of something steaming from her. “Maybe it is.”

“To backwater planets,” Shara says.

The caf is welcome bitterness, warming him up.

He doesn’t have to look at her to know that she’s watching him, all shrewdness and deduction. Not for nothing have the other Intelligence groups been trying to poach her all this time -- but Shara is loyal to the starfighter corps, and will never stop being a pilot, and that’s just how it will be. 

Which is a shame, Cassian thinks, because he doesn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times she’s saved his life -- and that’s just counting the incidents on the ground. 

He’s scraping the bottom of his mug when Shara says, “You do know I can see it, right?”

No point in dissembling, Cassian thinks. “And if you can see it, can everyone else?”

“Kes knows only because I told him,” she says. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if Solo knows, nothing much gets past him.”

“Organa,” Cassian prompts, because he’s already hip-deep in the midden.

Shara rolls her eyes. “Naturally.”

“That’s a lot of people.”

“When are you going to do anything about it?” She gets up and rummages in the tiny cabinets, and makes an amused sound when she digs out a box of hard bread.

He gets up, wanting to be helpful, and though his knees protest the sudden movement he keeps going: hot water in a shallow basin, just enough to rehydrate the bread. They’ll have to wait for it. 

“Sit down,” Shara says, and doesn’t swear at him, at least not out loud. 

“I am -- not nervous,” and the words trickle out of him in fits and starts. “I am trying to figure out why I feel this way towards her.” He holds up a hand when Shara opens her mouth to speak. “I mean -- I was convinced that I would die on Scarif. I was convinced that I would die above Yavin IV. You know me, Shara. I have never been afraid to die.”

“Comes with the territory,” she says, soberly. “And even more so for you.”

“But she saved me. Saved me again and again. That’s why I’m trying to figure things out. I am grateful to her, and I am attracted to her, and which one of those will outlast the other?”

“Why is that important?”

“I’m not interested in flings any more.” He sighed, and ran his hands through his lank hair. 

She looks at him with sympathy -- and she’s a friend, and he can’t bear it. He looks away.

“I might as well ask you about Kes,” he says, after a while.

“He asked me to marry him,” Shara says. “I said yes. I’m not an idiot.”

“Congratulations,” Cassian says, and he reaches across the table to clasp her wrist warmly.

“You’re going to be there,” she says. “I won’t accept any excuses. So -- so don’t die, all right? Don’t do anything stupid.”

He goes still. “I -- ”

“Cassian,” Shara says.

He squeezes her wrist again, and gets to his feet.

And the moment he turns for the door, he can hear the very quiet scuff of boots.

When Jyn pushes past him with an amused smile, it’s all he can do to nod back, distracted as he is by the scent of cloud-leaf in her hair, by the wiry shoulders bared by her sleeveless shirt. There is a star-shaped pucker in the meat of her upper right arm, and silvery raised lines on the back of her neck -- hairline scars of some kind.

“Oh, I didn’t know there was anything else to eat,” Jyn says, and she breaks off a chunk of the softened bread, and crams it into her mouth.

He badly wants to brush away the crumbs on her chin.

Instead he turns away and heads to the bunk that he’s claimed as his own, and the lingering ghost of cloud-leaf scent follows him into a restless sleep, into restless dreams.

*

“This is heavy freighter _Deep River_ requesting clearance to land.”

He’s sitting just outside the cockpit, and he’s listening to Shara and to Jyn as they speak with the port authorities, and while he’d been the one to coach Shara on her Corellian accent, it’s strange to hear Jyn’s flatter, more vapid take on it. 

He’s too used to listening to her as she debates tactics, as she advocates for one type of mission over another, as she exchanges stories with the others back at base. Too used to the way she mutes her Imperial accent. He thinks that perhaps she’ll always revert to that accent because it’s one of her last links back to her family, but it’s also a serious liability in so many ways, and she probably has a list, somewhere on her person if not somewhere in the corners of her sharp mind.

And speaking of her sharp mind -- 

“Heavy freighter _Deep River_ ,” a tinny but still officious voice says, “what are high-quality explosives doing on your manifest?”

Jyn doesn’t even hesitate, Cassian thinks: “We’re making a delivery to a construction company,” she says. “And sometimes you need to demolish something before you start building again. Settlements here don’t have much in the way of land, do they? Layers and layers of construction on the same site. If you want to build well, though, if you want something that will last for a long time, you’re going to have to bring it all down and start afresh.”

He peeks into the cockpit. He can see the tension in Shara’s shoulders.

In the silence that follows, he can almost hear Jyn cursing under her breath.

“Cleared for landing,” the tinny voice says.

“Thank you,” Jyn says. 

He comes back into the cockpit.

She keys the comms board off, and then says, “Tell me I can blow that one up.”

He stands between their seats. “What name did he give you?”

“None,” Shara says, “but I looked at the personnel rosters. That was likely to have been Aeliei Narros. Known Imperial sympathizer. He’s leading the efforts to keep this system loyal.”

Jyn is looking up at him, and the fire that burns in her eyes is familiar.

“If we get a chance at him -- he’s all yours,” he says.

Knife-edged smile.

There’s a strand of silver in her hair, curling towards the corner of her mouth.

*

His ears are starting to ring from the cacophony of alarms and the whining cry of blasters, and that’s not even taking into consideration the explosions that he thinks might be coming closer and closer. Might be heading his way.

He’d bang a fist against the rickety terminal at which he’s been crouched for the past hour or so, if he thought it would do any good. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other terminals he can get to within the area. He’s going to have to wait on this one to finish thinking and actually _work_ , and he curses every second of wasted time.

Every second that he’s wasting, away from Jyn’s side where he belongs.

“Cassian!” Shara’s voice. It’s not coming from the commlink as he was expecting. 

He throws a glance over his shoulder and swears, once, viciously. “Get in here!” he roars. “I still have the medkit -- ”

“None of this mess is mine, fool,” is the aggravated answer. “Some other bastard’s. Jyn shot them off my back, and yelled at me to come get you. Didn’t have to tell me to keep you safe.”

The mention of her name both gives him strength and leaves him trembling -- he forces his hands to stop shaking and keep working at the terminal -- there’s another series of explosions, and this time the floor beneath his feet groans ominously. “Kriff,” he snarls, and snatches at the disk he’d plugged into the terminal.

“The data,” Shara begins.

“I got most of it,” Cassian says. “The rest of the files I was downloading -- they were messages sent by that sympathizer you were talking to.”

She throws him an amused little smile. “So -- a courting gift of some kind? Is that how it’s done?”

“Would have been better if I’d snatched the man himself to bring to her.”

“You’ve got it bad, Andor, and I’m qualified to know,” she says with a little laugh.

“Little help here,” the commlink on his belt chooses that moment to say.

“Status,” he barks, hoping Jyn is all right.

“I heard the distress signal,” she says. “The Imps are going to get here soon -- we need to go.”

“Stay where you are,” Shara says, “I’ll come get you with the freighter -- ”

“Not an option,” Jyn says. “Wait for me at the landing pad -- the one at the top.”

Cassian stares at Shara. 

“Not like we have a choice,” she says, and she gets to her feet. “Come on, Andor.”

He can’t stop himself from looking over his shoulder, even though he doesn’t actually know where Jyn’s gotten herself to, and has no idea what direction she’ll be coming from.

All he has to go on is the fact that she seems to have left her commlink on, and the determined edge in her voice, and the marching boom of approaching explosions.

*

His heart in his throat, Cassian waits in the cargo hold, its door hanging open. His eyes are fixed on a flimsy mock-up of a shuttle landing pad. What it can actually accommodate he has no idea -- he only knows that it was apparently built there on order of Aeliei Narros -- and now that’s the point that Shara has been steering Jyn towards, so that she can _jump into the freighter_.

The landing pad is at least a kilometer up from ground level, and he doesn’t want to think about Jyn jumping and missing -- doesn’t want to think about her plummeting down -- but he can’t stop himself from reaching out -- 

“She’s almost there!” Shara yells.

He wills her to move, wills her to make it. 

He can see her now, and she’s -- oh kriff she’s favoring her arm -- 

Rapid strides onto the landing pad itself, and she’s leaping forward with every step, and he can’t see her face yet, not clearly. He can only see the spring of her, the swing of her arms, the pumping of her knees -- 

“Out of the way,” Jyn gasps over the commlink.

He has to move, and he can’t -- he flattens himself to the side of the door instead -- 

“I said move!”

The pain in her voice is a whip, is a goad, and he scrambles for the back of the hold.

Shara is shouting, too: “Kriffing -- Jyn, let me get closer!”

“No time!” is the response.

He sees the moment when she throws herself off the landing pad. The moment when she throws herself toward the freighter. He’s on his knees, his arms are wide open, he’s willing her to make it -- 

“She’s in,” he mutters, in disbelief.

Jyn is a collapsed heap of torn fatigues, and he crawls towards her.

“Getting out, getting out, brace for hard evasion,” Shara shouts.

Jyn is reaching out for him when he gets to her side -- she burrows into him, arms like hard bands around his midsection, and he curls protectively around her. He protects the back of her head with his hands, tucks her into his chest, holds her legs in place between his own knees.

The freighter bucks and rolls and sways sickeningly, and he trusts Shara but the way she flies is going to make him throw up -- 

His jacket tightens, and he looks down, and Jyn’s hand is fisted in the material over his chest.

“I’m here,” he chokes out.

“Don’t let go,” she says.

“I won’t.”

*

He escapes the medcenter, this time -- but he’s _ordered_ to rest and this time all the higher-ups know that he’s not to be sent out on missions until the doctors give him the all-clear.

He barely hears any of it. He’s too preoccupied. 

Jyn has been confined to quarters after liberal application of bacta patches and a light cast for her healing knee, which she’d all but shattered in her leap towards the freighter.

He’d spent the first hours back composing his report to be transmitted to Draven -- misspelled words and all. He’s been sitting outside Jyn’s room since.

The door opens after the -- third? Fourth? -- day, and he startles out of a weary doze when he hears Jyn’s voice: “Why are you out here?”

He’s not really thinking when he says, “Couldn’t sleep in my quarters.”

“So you’re out here instead?” 

He unfolds himself upwards from the floor, and curses quietly as his joints twinge with the effort.

“I should go,” he mumbles at her.

Even with his bleary eyes, he can see that she’s too pale -- pale enough that he can finally see the freckles marching over the bridge of her nose. He can see the tremble in her hands. He can see the lines in her face.

“Beautiful,” he says.

He’s expecting her to laugh, or to close the door, or to push him away.

He’s expecting her to turn her back on him.

She does precisely none of those things.

She says, “So are you.” 

Cassian blinks.

The gentle curve of her smile is something he’s never seen before: this is a smile that’s sweet and subdued and focused solely on him.

She holds her hand -- still wrapped in bandages -- out to him, and he takes it.

And she doesn’t let him go until she’s climbing back into her narrow bed.

He snags the only chair in her quarters with his foot, and drags it over, and then he hears her say, “Get in here.”

Cassian stands there, speechless, for a very long time -- and then he climbs in with her.

It’s almost too easy to roll onto his side and curl around her. Too easy to press his forehead into her hair. Too easy to wrap his arm around her waist.

For her part, the weight of her against him is compact and wiry. Faint traces of cloud-leaf scent remain on the back of her neck -- though he can also smell the rough material of her blankets and pillows, and the sour fear-sweat of that impossible and foolish leap.

He’s almost dropped off to sleep when he hears her whisper a question: “Safe?”

He doesn’t hesitate to answer: “Yes.”

“Good.”

When she leans back against him, he smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s watching Jyn spring across the landing pad in order to jump towards the cargo hatch.

She misses, and with a soft cry he’s lost her -- 

He hurls himself out, and he’s falling towards her, and he can’t fall quickly enough to catch her hand --

Cassian wakes up, and doesn’t quite manage to suppress his sharp intake of breath.

“Easy,” says a sleep-rough voice. Jyn’s voice. “Easy,” she says again. “You just woke up.”

He says her name, and doesn’t try to hide his relief. “Jyn.”

“Cassian.”

When she says his name, he can’t help but lean towards her. He can’t help but see, in the dim light of the room, how her mouth moves, how it shapes the word, how it curls into a small smile after.

He’s still here in her bed, and she’s looking at him with that intense focus of hers, and he feels simultaneously very small and very large at the same time. His hand is itching with the need to touch her. The entire side of his body against which she had been leaning in her sleep has gone cold, now that she’s moved away, now that she’s sitting up over him.

Her smile grows a little wider -- and then she’s moving towards him, she’s still looking at him, even as she kisses him.

And fool that he is, he’s slack-jawed for a long moment -- long enough that she moves away and laughs right in his face.

Heat rises into his cheeks -- but he laughs back. “I wasn’t prepared,” he says.

“I could tell,” is her response.

“Will you do it again? Kiss me?”

He holds his breath for her answer.

She shakes her head fractionally, and she’s still laughing -- but this time when she kisses him he’s ready: he reaches up to her, he fans his fingertips over her cheeks, he takes a deep breath of her, in all her warmth.

With tongue and teeth she coaxes him to open up for her, to strain up towards her. He can hear the rush of his heartbeat, roaring in his ears -- and he can feel the pulse of her, where she’s holding on to his wrists, bright rapidity that takes his breath away.

And he’s not ashamed to sigh, needy and unfulfilled, when she pulls gently away.

But she doesn’t go far, and she brushes her mouth against his cheek, and her words are sweet on his skin when she says, “I know you were looking at me.”

He wants to bow his head in embarrassment. “Someone told you.”

“They didn’t have to. I saw you.”

He needs to apologize -- but she shakes her head. Kisses him again. 

And says, against his mouth, “At first I didn’t mind. Then -- then I started to depend on it. I wanted you to keep looking at me.” When she blinks he can just make out the fine fan of her eyelashes against her skin. “But I do want to know: why were you looking?”

“I -- I was trying to decide,” he says, making himself continue to meet her eyes. “My eyes were drawn to you, and I was trying to understand how I felt about you. I knew I wanted you. That was not in question. But I didn’t know why. If it was just infatuation I would have left you alone. Eventually. If it was just being grateful that you saved my life I would have kept it to myself. That is not a thing to build a relationship on.”

“You want to be with me,” Jyn says, and she cuts to the heart of the matter, and he admires her and wants to shrink away from her at the same time.

“Yes. Without even asking if you would want to. I’m sorry about that.”

“I wouldn’t have known,” Jyn says, “if I hadn’t made you speak.”

“I wasn’t done deciding,” he says, as honestly as he can. “I was nowhere near deciding.”

She looks away. There is a wrinkle in her forehead that deepens with every moment. Her hands in her lap, twisting and untwisting.

“Can you decide now?” Her voice is small. Quiet. It’s not like her at all. “Can you decide?”

And just like that, it’s easy. “I’ll follow your lead.”

She’s wide-eyed for a long moment. “Even if I told you to kriff off?”

He nods, and asks, “ _Are_ you telling me to kriff off?”

She bows her head, and for a moment her eyes are hidden beneath the unruly fall of her sleep-mussed hair, and he has to force himself to keep breathing. To remain calm. It won’t be the end of the world if she tells him she’s not looking for a relationship -- but if she tells him they can’t be friends, that might be more difficult -- 

“Cassian,” she says.

“Jyn.”

She looks at him. Her eyebrows pulled together into a straight line. “I’m not sure that being in any kind of relationship is a good idea. This thing we’re in -- ”

He laughs, quietly, mirthlessly. “I know. I do. I understand.”

He swings his legs over, prepares to leave.

“Don’t go.”

It’s almost the same thing she said, on _Deep River_ , and helplessly he takes her hand. “Whatever you want me to be,” he says. “Whatever you want from me. I gave you my word.”

He closes his mouth around the words, _I gave you my heart._

“I don’t know what to do,” she says. “I don’t know about relationships. But I know you. I’m willing to take that risk, if it’s with you. If you’re with me.”

“I’m with you, Jyn,” and if she hears the tremble in his words, she doesn’t show it. “I’ve been with you since -- since Scarif.”

He gets a tiny, strained little smile for that -- and it’s not the right kind of smile for her, it twists her mouth in the wrong way -- he reaches out for her, pulls her close, kisses her, as though he were drowning and she’s air -- 

She meets him kiss for kiss with equal fervor -- and then she’s pressing him back into the bed. She’s swinging her good knee over him. 

He smiles, and he’s mindful of her injuries, and he pulls her down so she can lie atop him, so they can kiss -- now long and lazy and now hot and hurried -- and it’s her fingertips trailing down to his chest, flicking at the buttons on his shirt. He reluctantly breaks the kiss. Asks, just to make sure: “Do you want this?”

“Yes,” Jyn says.

He makes short work of his clothes -- and hers, when she guides his hands to fastenings and clasps and the pin that keeps her chest band in place.

He lingers over the details of her. Old injuries. Old and new scars. The whirl of her freckles and the birthmark on her stomach in the shape of a spiral galaxy, and he thinks of the word _stardust_ , and presses kisses to her throat, to her collarbone, to the hollow between her breasts.

He thrills in the flutter in her breaths, in the convulsive twitch of her hands in his hair, as he guides her to lie down -- as he nibbles at the corners of her mouth, and trails widening circles over her stomach, drifting slowly down and down -- until he brushes the core of her, and that makes her moan his name, loud in the hush of the room.

He collects the sweet slickness of her on his fingertips, uses that to ease the way, and it’s not long before he’s taking her in firm strokes, seeking the very center of her pleasure, twisting his hand this way and that -- and he listens for the broken sounds falling from her mouth, the increasingly belabored pace of her breathing -- he knows he’s found what he’s looking for when she begins to tremble, when she begins to keen -- 

He doesn’t let up -- he redoubles his pace -- and at last she cries out, replete.

As she lies trembling in the aftermath, he ventures to stroke the hair away from her face -- he avoids the pale strand, and studies the sweat beading at her temples, and so he’s not prepared when she says, “Not done yet,” and “Want to have you.”

He’s torn between grinning and wincing -- she’s just reminded him of how ruthlessly he’s been ignoring himself, ignoring the rush of heat and blood to his cock, and when she takes him in her hand it’s all he can do not to cry out, not to beg her for something -- anything -- and before he can think that she’s deliberately prolonging his torment, she’s carefully climbing onto him -- 

At the last instant, just as she’s starting to sink down onto him, he remembers to throw his arm across his mouth -- it’s just enough to muffle the desperate shout she wrings from his throat -- he can’t stop himself from pushing up into her, from catching her by the hips and thrusting, almost mindless and much too good -- the intoxicating thrust and roll of her body, powerful and blinding -- 

Through the ringing in his ears, he hears her whisper, as if matching the rhythm of their lovemaking, “More, harder, please -- ”

The cot groans beneath them.

He has to last, he has to make this good for her, he has to hold back -- 

Suddenly she goes still over him -- he’s again enthralled by the way her climax twists her face -- but he only has a moment to enjoy it because he, too, is suddenly yanked over the edge, completely unexpected, blinding him -- 

When he comes to, Jyn is studying him, and he fights the urge to look away. To hide. To cover himself. Too late for that now.

“My turn,” she says, as if she were reading his mind.

He laughs, softly, and makes himself sprawl out. 

There’ll be time enough to get used to this, he thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
